L-Soft is pleased to kick off the EmailRules discussion community. As some of the first to be informed about EmailRules, LISTSERV at Work readers are invited to join this unique community designed to bring together email marketers and opt-in email communicators. EmailRules welcomes anyone who has questions, answers, best practices and advice to share about navigating the changing landscape of opt-in email marketing and email list communication.

L-Soft is making one-time HDMail High Deliverability Mailer offers that are truly in a class of their own, with savings of up to 50 percent, depending on license size. This one-time offer is only valid until June 30, 2007. Learn more about this unique opportunity to optimize your deliverability with unparalleled discounts.

Q: What should I do in the unlikely event that LISTSERV crashes, and how can I prevent it?

Answer by Michael ShannonSenior Consulting Analyst, L-Soft

L-Soft customer support sometimes gets email from site managers complaining that LISTSERV has suddenly crashed. On inspection of the system log, something similar to the following is often seen as the last few lines before the crash:

Would you like to see your organization's work with LISTSERV or LISTSERV Maestro featured in L-Soft's "LISTSERV at Work" newsletter and Website? L-Soft staff is available to develop case study profiles based on your input, and you will be given the opportunity to approve the case study before it is published. Or would you like to provide a quote or testimonial on your positive experience with L-Soft products?

The EU Directive 2003/58/EC is required to be in force in the European Union member states as of December 31, 2006. In practice, this means that the same information disclosure requirements now apply to business email as to physical business letters. Companies registered or operating in the EU now need to state their company details on every electronic business communication sent from their organization.

Nominations are open in this year's LISTSERV Choice Awards. This year, all types of lists are eligible for nomination for one special grand prize award. Nominations

will be accepted until October 1, but don't wait – nominate today. Congratulations to Balita Organization, Inc., nominator Wayne Johns, our first winner in the monthly t-shirt drawing for individuals who submit nominations.

L-Soft is looking for beta testers for LISTSERV Maestro 3.1. LISTSERV Maestro customers who are interested in message templates, multivariate testing (aka A/B-split testing), and forward-to-a-friend functionality are encouraged to contact their sales representatives to be considered for the beta.

Q: We use an earlier version of Microsoft SQL Server for our LISTSERV Maestro system database and want to upgrade to SQL Server 2005. Is there anything we need to be aware of?

Answer by Michael ShannonSenior Consulting Analyst, L-Soft

There are two very important issues that must be addressed before upgrading to Microsoft SQL Server 2005.

First, the Microsoft JDBC driver used for earlier versions of SQL Server does not work with SQL Server 2005 so it must be upgraded. Second, the changes to the LISTSERV Maestro database plugins required to communicate with SQL Server 2005 were only introduced in LISTSERV Maestro 2.1, so if you're running an earlier version of LISTSERV Maestro, you need to upgrade to the latest version (currently 3.0-5).